Tips & tricks to help you get the most out of your online advertising.

4 Common Mistakes Advertisers Make When Transferring AdWords Accounts to Bing

Are you the one who transferred an entire Google AdWords account into Bing Ads? But do you actually manage your new Bing account? It’s now easy to copy an account from Google to Bing, but that doesn’t mean that your account will be performing the same in the Bing sponsored results.

Bing Ads is a completely different system with its own set of rules, and it is doesn’t matter how thoroughly you work inside your Google AdWords account – that won’t necessarily help you in Bing.

As a Paid Search Specialist at WordStream, I work with many accounts and I hear all the time: “Do your work on AdWords and we’ll move it to Bing when you’re all done.” Yes, that is easy but it is not the right approach to utilize the different networks. When I actually log in to Bing accounts I can see multiple mistakes which need to be improved ASAP.

Mistake #1: Screwing Up the Settings

Firstly, when you transfer an entire account you need to pay close attention to all your settings. Some features like geo targeting, custom shapes, and audiences would be not applicable to Bing’s advertising platform. Your settings could be missed if Bing doesn’t recognize some of the AdWords features. Your ads might be shown to the entire population on every possible device in the United States or globally.

Mistake #2: Ignoring Your Bing Search Query Report

Secondly, check your Bing query report to avoid displaying for unrelated terms in Bing search. Your Bing and Google search queries could be completely different, especially when you target broad, modified broad, or phrase match types. Google AdWords is more advanced when it comes to matching advertiser’s targeted keywords, ad text, and the landing page. In most cases Google can detect when the advertiser bids on a holiday trip to Washington DC and not a book about George Washington. Bing Ads is not so advanced yet when it comes to matching queries to the right ad or landing page and some search traffic from Bing could be completely irrelevant to your business.

For example, we began to manage a client who sells lights and glow sticks for night clubs and partygoers. The client transferred his well-optimized AdWords account to Bing and left it on “autopilot.” Later on, the client logged in to Google Analytics and found a high bounce rate from Bing, indicating that people who came from a Bing search were unexcited and left the website right away.

We evaluated the Bing account and discovered that 99.9% of the traffic, everything except the branded terms, was unrelated. For example: the keyword “micro lights” brought hundreds of queries from people who searched for the Micromax smartphone, and the term “led lights” brought all different queries from people who were looking to repair their car’s headlights. It uncovers the fact that Bing does not match to landing page content and is less restrictive when it comes to broad match.

Mistake #3: Copying Mobile/Display Campaigns to Bing

Thirdly, I don’t recommend transferring your AdWords mobile and display campaigns to Bing because it can cause multiple mistakes and interruptions. They don’t work the same way on both platforms.

Mistake #4: Too Little Time Spent Optimizing Bing Ads

Besides working on your settings and queries, I also recommend doing a full evaluation of your Bing account on a monthly or quarterly basis. Microsoft is working to improve the Bing Ads system and the inside changes could involuntarily affect your account performance. By working on multiple Bing accounts, I have noticed that it is impossible to expect consistent performance from Bing.

In addition, I recommend using WordStream software which allows you to manage AdWords and Bing Ads accounts on the same screen inside the same software platform. Our software can simultaneously apply negative keywords and make other improvements across both accounts.

Sergey Rusak

Sergey Rusak joined Wordstream in 2011 as one of the first employees on the Managed Services team. After leaving the company in 2015, he held various marketing-related positions in tech companies around Boston. He is currently the Director of Demand Generation at Kuebix, a fast-growing startup in the logistics and supply chain industry. In his free time, Sergey writes about digital marketing on his blog Demand Generation.